1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to the field of image visualization, and more specifically to methods and systems for compressing and remotely visualizing volume rendered images.
2. Discussion of Related Art
With tremendous advances in volume imaging modalities, remote visualization of volumetric images has gained importance in many applications such as medical imaging, nondestructive testing and computational fluid dynamics.
In one method of remote visualization, volumetric data is transmitted from a server to a client and one or more images are rendered on the client from the volumetric data for local display. However, image rendering can be a computationally intensive process, often requiring hardware acceleration to achieve a real time viewing experience. Thus, it is likely that the quality and frame rate would be limited in a client side rendering system.
In another method of remote visualization, the server performs all the rendering using dedicated hardware based on view-point requests from the client. This client-server model is shown in FIG. 1. The server 110 renders images from volumetric data 115 using dedicated hardware (e.g., a hardware accelerated rendering engine). The rendered images are compressed on the server 110. The compressed rendered images are then transmitted from the server 110 to the client 120. The client then decompresses the images for local display. For a given server-client bandwidth, an efficient compression scheme is vital for transmitting high quality rendered images.
Thus, there is a need for methods and systems that can more efficiently compress rendered images and remotely display those images.